![]() ![]() Through your Career Development and Financial Aid departments, research alternative funding options for non-employment-based experiential learning opportunities and internships. ![]() Immigrant Rising has an excellent guide to building on-campus undocumented student programs. ![]() At the campus leadership level, form a working group to establish counseling groups, address food insecurity, enhance commuter resources, provide financial advising, and tailor career guidance. Target undocumented students through specific on-campus programs and services. Use phrases to show support like “regardless of immigration status,” “students with or without work authorization,” and “undocumented students (with or without DACA).” Add inclusive language to admission materials and other student-facing resources where applicable. Students may not know who to turn to for help regarding sensitive topics related to immigration status, but something as simple as a sticker or flier on your door may be enough to open a conversation. Show support. Find opportunities to show support for undocumented students in your office, classroom, syllabus, department, social media, or website. See what might be implementable on your campus based on what other institutions have done. Work with Admissions, Financial Aid, Counseling, Career Development, and other offices to discuss inclusive actions and support structures. Push for inclusive campus scholarships targeting undocumented students as well as researching national partnerships with existing programs like TheDream.US, Golden Door Scholars, and others. Work on clarifying policies and practices wherever possible with campus stakeholders (e.g., Oglethorpe University’s Undocumented Students FAQs). Does your university already have resources and policies directed toward undocumented students? What can be done to actively support students of different immigration statuses at the individual, departmental, and institutional levels? How can you optimally protect students’ privacy while simultaneously providing them with needed support? You can review your state’s data and policies affecting undocumented students via the Higher Ed Immigration Portal. But higher education institutions can support students of different immigration statuses regardless of our policymakers' actions. We can and should continue to push congress to pass legislation that opens a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers and undocumented immigrants. Current undocumented college students already face a host of challenges, and continued inaction from legislatures will only make their lives more expensive and more dangerous as prices go up and immigration protections are stripped back. There are an estimated 100,000 undocumented high school graduates nationally each year eager to contribute, get a degree, and join the workforce but who are being refused the ability to even apply for work authorization, and worse, face deportations from their homes to a country they may not have been to since they were children. Undocumented high school graduates are increasingly aging out of eligibility to apply for DACA in its current state, provided the program is allowed to continue. On and off-campus jobs, paid internships, and funded research would be almost entirely off the table, post-graduation career opportunities will be limited. ![]() Nationally, repealing DACA would take away over 600,000 members of the country’s workforce, including an estimated 181,000 DACA-eligible college students. Fully repealing DACA would mean that Georgia’s nearly 20,000 DACA recipients - who have on average lived in Georgia for almost two decades - would lose their authorization to work and the state would face an even greater job shortage than it already has, in addition to the loss of tax revenue from each of those soon-to-be unemployed Georgia residents. With the growing likelihood that the program will be ruled unlawful and DACA renewals halted indefinitely, undocumented students will face a challenging new reality. The future of DACA itself is uncertain as the program bounces through the courts again. Constant threats of deportation for themselves and family members, limited options for earning income, lack of accessible healthcare, and ineligibility for driver’s licenses in some states are ever-present hurdles. As the scholar advisor to TheDream.US recipients at Oglethorpe, I regularly hear about the struggles and obstacles they are forced to face every day. Undocumented students make up nearly 10% of Oglethorpe’s degree-seeking student body. In 2019, Oglethorpe partnered with TheDream.US, a national scholarship program that helps provide access to a college education for immigrant youth who came to the country at a young age without documentation. Over the past few years, Oglethorpe University has seen a steady increase in Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and undocumented enrollees. ![]()
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